The Furies

Chapter Twenty-six Collateral Damage

“I do not see that we have any choice,” Teyla said. It was still weird to see her at the conference table like that, her skin tinted green and her face that of a Wraith, though not as weird as it used to be. John was getting used to it, and that was even weirder.

“How is that?” Woolsey said. It was kind of nice to see him back at the head of the table where he belonged, but nicer yet not to be there himself.

“If I do not show up for the rendezvous with Queen Death, this masquerade will be useless,” Teyla said. “I will never be able to do this again, and any future intelligence we might have gleaned will be lost.”

“And any shot at using it to get Rodney,” John added.

Jennifer cleared her throat. She looked pale, but her voice was firm. “We owe Todd,” she said. “And if we hang him out to dry about this we might as well say goodbye to our alliance.”

Ronon snorted, not looking at her. “We never should have made a deal with him in the first place. I say we let him hang. Fewer Wraith to worry about.”

Jennifer didn’t look at Ronon either. “I don’t think we can afford to do that.”

“Not if there’s still any chance of getting to Rodney,” John said.

Woolsey steepled his hands. “Realistically, is that an option?”

Carter shifted in her seat but said nothing.

“I believe that it is,” Teyla said, her skirts rustling as she moved in the chair next to John. “It is very difficult for ordinary Wraith to refuse to comply with my requests. A queen is a different matter, but I am able to gain access to information and people in this guise that we would never be able to otherwise.”

“That’s an important consideration,” Woolsey said thoughtfully. “So far, this has been our most reliable source of information, and in the future could provide critical intelligence. I’m reluctant to lose that.”

Ronon shook his head. “It’ll be a double cross. You know that, right? There’s no way this meeting is on the up and up even if Queen Death thinks you’re Wraith.”

“He has a point,” Carter said from the far end of the table, leaning forward a little to be seen around Carson. “This smells to me like a trap for Steelflower. Queen Death can’t be happy with her sapping off potential allies or setting herself up as a rival.”

“So we double cross them back,” John said. He put his coffee cup down on the table, looking up and back. “We know it’s a trap. But she doesn’t know that Teyla is with us. She’ll be expecting treachery from Todd, but she’s not going to expect anything from us. Let Teyla keep the rendezvous with Todd. And while Queen Death is occupied, we get a team in, grab Rodney, steal back our ZPM, and Carter shoots up the place.”

“We tried that before and it didn’t work,” Woolsey pointed out.

“It didn’t work for two reasons,” John said. “We didn’t know Rodney was a Wraith and didn’t have any means to subdue him, and we didn’t have an operative on the inside. This time we know what we’re up against, and Teyla can get in ahead of us.”

Woolsey and Carter spoke at once. “How are you planning to subdue Dr. McKay?” Woolsey asked.

“Won’t Teyla be guarded and watched?” Carter asked.

“I can sedate him,” Jennifer said with a quick glance at Carson beside her. “We’ve got a formula that will work on his metabolism. I can keep him unconscious as long as necessary.”

“Of course I will be,” Teyla said. “But if they are guarding and watching me, they are not doing other things. If Steelflower is their first concern, they will watch for treachery from us, and from the hive. They will not expect the Lanteans.”

Woolsey’s brow knitted. The way she had put it, the way she had phrased it, sounded as though she were really Steelflower, as though this were actually an alliance between her hive and Atlantis.

John jumped in. “This may be our best shot at stealing back our ZPM,” he said. “If Queen Death has it aboard, there’s a good chance our team can get it back. And then we’d be in a much better position all around.” Not to mention, John thought, how much better a position Woolsey would be in with his superiors if he could say he’d gotten it back.

Woolsey swallowed. He looked down the table. “Colonel Carter, what is your military opinion?”

Carter leaned forward again, her eyes flicking over John before she replied. “The Hammond is no match for Queen Death’s hive ship. If we get into a slugging match, we’re going to get the worst of it. But, if you can get a team aboard in a cloaked jumper, we can certainly create a distraction for some limited amount of time. And if we had Todd’s hive ship in it with us, we could take out her ship.”

“Trusting Todd,” Ronon said. He met her eyes firmly. “You’re saying you’re going to take the Hammond between two hive ships and trust Todd will shoot them instead of you. If this is a double cross, how do we know he’s not in on it?”

“He is not,” Teyla said.

Ronon looked across the table at her. “How do you know?”

“If Todd intends treachery, I can get that from his mind,” she said.

“Yeah?” Ronon’s eyes met hers, and John wished he could break that gaze. Something was breaking, tearing apart, and he had to stop it but he didn’t have the words, didn’t know how…

“I can get it from his mind,” Teyla said levelly. “He will not be able to keep such a secret from me, not when we are face to face.” There was no flush to her cheeks, only that icy Wraith voice, and her eyes did not leave Ronon’s.

It was Carter who interrupted it. “If you’re certain, then it’s worth a try. This may be our best chance at getting both the ZPM and Rodney.”

Teyla turned to her quite deliberately. “I am certain,” she said.

Woolsey cleared his throat, glancing down at his laptop as though it would somehow reveal something new. “There is one other thing,” he said.

“What?” John asked.

Woolsey glanced at John, carefully not looking down Jennifer’s side of the table at all. “The IOA has given me some very specific directives as part and parcel of my return to Atlantis. If we cannot recover Dr. McKay,” he paused, taking a breath, “and of course we want to, but if we can’t, we cannot continue to let him provide Queen Death with intelligence. Colonel Sheppard, your orders are to kill him.”

He heard the indrawn breaths and his voice firmed. “Right now Dr. McKay is a threat to every human being in the Pegasus Galaxy, and a potential danger to Earth. If we cannot recover him, there is no next time. Is that clear?”

John felt as though ice had settled in his stomach, had frozen hard in his chest.

“Homeworld Command—” Carter began.

“Homeworld Command reluctantly concurs,” Woolsey said. “But you are welcome to query if you feel it necessary.” He looked at John. “This isn’t a matter of politics, Colonel. Ask yourself if Dr. McKay would want to provide Queen Death with information that would lead to the loss of thousands of lives, including the lives of his family and friends. This is mercy.”

John took a long breath. Ice, but he could breathe around it. He could move. It was true that Rodney would never want this. He would never want to remain a Wraith forever, or worse yet to give Queen Death the technology that would allow her to reach Earth. He’d rather die.

And this was it, the arithmetic of death. How much was one man’s life worth? Everybody’s?

“Mercy,” Ronon said, but he was looking at Jennifer, not John. “There’s only so much a man can take. There’s only so much he should.”

Jennifer bit down on her lip, her face white. “I know,” she said.

Teyla was still and voiceless in the mask of her Wraith face.

Woolsey was looking at him. “Colonel Sheppard?”

“Understood,” John said. “If we can’t recover him, we’ll do what we have to do.”

“Ronon.” John jogged toward the transport chamber. “Hey! Wait up!”

The doors closed ahead of him as though Ronon hadn’t heard, hadn’t seen them coming after. John put his hand on the closed doors carefully, not hitting them at all.

“Let him go, John,” Teyla said quietly. “It is not you.”

“I know.” John turned back to her as the transport chamber doors opened again on an empty compartment. Even in the high heeled boots she wore in Wraith guise, Teyla hardly came up to his chin. But she was frightening all the same. Her black hair fell down her back from silver combs, and the veins in her throat stood out, a tracery of darker green against nacreous skin. She was terrifying. And beautiful.

Teyla stepped into the transport beside him but let him touch the map. Her nails made the Ancient interfaces awkward. It was hard to touch things directly with the pad of her fingers, and the momentary heat was what activated the touchscreens.

“Ronon has to get over this,” John said.

“He is not going to,” Teyla said as the doors opened on the corridor near her living quarters. “He cannot do this,” Teyla said. “And such is my love for him that I cannot ask him to. It is too much for him to know this.”

“It’s you,” John said stubbornly, following her into her rooms. “You’re not a Wraith.”

“John.” She stopped in the middle of the floor, her arms at her sides. Behind her woven blinds covered the windows, opened to let in the dim winter sun, and a big plastic munitions crate held Torren’s toys. Her laced black boots sunk deep into the white rug. “Look at me.”

“I know what you are,” he said.

“How much Wraith DNA does it take to make one Bloodtainted? How much Wraith blood to be a Wraith?” She shook her head as he took a step toward her. “I am not fully human, John, even when I appear to be. I can still speak mind to mind. I looked human when I defeated Coldamber beneath the sea, and she was a great queen in her time.”

“And if you hadn’t we’d all be dead,” John said. “I’m not going to complain about that.” He reached for her hand and took it in his, drew her down to sit beside him on the couch. “You’re a person.”

“Is Todd a person?” she asked.

He’d known the answer to that in Kolya’s prison. Which didn’t mean he liked it. “Yes.”

“Ronon has been hunted too long,” Teyla said. “His scars run too deep. He cannot see the Wraith as people, John.”

“No,” John said. “No.” He turned her hand over in his, his eyes on it. “That’s the thing. You can’t see the enemy as people. You can’t afford to. The minute you do it, it’s like slicing your guts up with glass every time you have to kill. You’ve got to turn it off. You’ve got to make it different. Otherwise you can’t do it without going crazy.” He didn’t lift his eyes from her fingers, as though they held some answer. “Otherwise you get called in for an airstrike on some village that’s harboring insurgents, and it turns out to be these guys you were drinking tea with last week, and you walk through the burned out houses afterwards and the smoke is blowing around you and you wonder if you got the insurgents but you got a lot of other people. You got that kid who was running around while you were talking with his dad, and he’s lying there with his eyes open and no legs, and there’s his grandmother dead beside the goat and Holland just keeps saying over and over that there were supposed to be Taliban here and…”

“John.” She closed his hand in hers, dark green claws against his skin. “John.”

He couldn’t seem to stop, though he knew he should. He shouldn’t say this stuff, not sitting on her couch with the verdigris walls of Atlantis about them and the snowlight coming through the windows unbearably bright. “And then two weeks later Holland’s bleeding out on you and he says it’s pay up time. Tit for tat. An eye for an eye. Those who live by the sword die by the sword. You can try to shut him up. You can make him shut up. But it’s still true.”

“John.” Her voice was quiet, urgent.

And still he couldn’t stop. “It’s borrowed time, Teyla. Sooner or later the account is due.”

Her eyes searched his face, as though she saw every mission there, every time the clock had been running out and he’d been willing. If someone had to go it ought to be him, the marked man.

“Very well,” Teyla said gravely. “If it is borrowed time, then it is. You will do the best you can while you may, and when you must you will die. That will be the story of your life, and it is better than many. You will not die for nothing, and you will not die unmourned.” Her voice cracked. “I will mourn you.”

“I didn’t mean to do that,” he said. “I didn’t mean to leave anybody who would be hurt.”

“You do not get to make that decision, John,” she said levelly. “That is my risk to take.”

He bent his head again, looking down at her hand. It felt like a weight lifting, like something loosening within him. “Ok.” One day it would be the last time. The reprieve would be over. Mitch and Dex and Holland had a few weeks. He’d had years. He’d had nearly seven years. It was more than he deserved. Nothing to complain about, really, when the time ran out.

Teyla watched him with golden Wraith’s eyes and her voice was steady. “When the time comes I will mourn. But until then you will not deny me joy.”

“I can never deny you anything,” John said truthfully.

She lifted her hand to his cheek, purpled feeding slit against his skin. “I know,” she said.